ATLANTA – Rams punter Mike Horan has been around so long that he’s even older than Titans block of granite Bruce Matthews.

Horan will turn 41 tomorrow, while Matthews is 39. Horan knows football and he knows life, so that’s why he was running around all week at Super Bowl XXXIV with a very special baseball cap on his head: a Columbine high baseball cap.

It’s his way of telling the people back home in Littleton, Col., that he is thinking of them. Horan’s home is within sight of the school where the horrific bloodbath took place when two madmen-students slaughtered 15 people, including themselves.

“I hope one of the things we can all learn from the tragedy is that we have to make sure we know what’s going on with our kids,” Horan said, pointing out the parents of the killer-students had no idea that their sons had come over the edge, despite a series of clues that something was terribly wrong. Horan has three daughters and a son.

“I certainly won’t go a week without going in my kids’ rooms,” Horan said. “I’m going to look in every nook and cranny.”

Horan replaced the injured Rick Tuten on Nov. 11 and made quite an impact on his teammates when Dick Vermeil brought him to the club.

“When I brought him in, I forgot to announce or recognized him to the squad at the meeting,” Vermeil recalled. “He walked in with one of those light blue Levy type shirts and jeans, the players thought he was a janitor. He kicked his 1,000th punt in the National Football League a couple of weeks ago and has done a great job for us.”